I guess it's difficult to fill the op-ed pages on this quasi-holiday week. So why not print a complete bullshit piece built on a phony straw man that can be debunked almost instantly? Many people are only tuned into Fox News and only read the Wall Street Journal. So they totally miss the debunking. This leaves them only too willing to believe the hype that the Obama administration is giving "a deliberate slap at the Catholic Church and the pope."
Written by former National Republican Chair and ambassador to the Vatican Jim Nicholson and former Boston Mayor and ambassador to the Vatican Ray Flynn, the piece simply regurgitates the same bile that came out when the news media first latched onto the story a month ago. Nothing new to report. But a lie only takes hold if it is repeated often enough so here we go.
Perhaps Nicholson thinks it would be a shame if future ambassadors to the Holy See are not able to make the case for neocon pre-emptive war as ineffectively as he did. Gotta keep up the good fight I guess!
And then there is Raymond Flynn. This is not the first time he opined on the subject.
I liked that characterization. Somehow there is always the danger of veiled anti-Catholocism. But when people like Rush Limbaugh, Stuart Varney, Lawrence Kudlow etc. engage in overt anti-Cathlocism, it's strangely quiet from the Nicholsons and Flynns of this world.
It kind of makes you think of something Jesus once said.
Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye;
and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye.
Matthew 7:5
At a time when the Pope
is named person of the year for spreading a new message like this:
"You can sell your desk," Francis told the new almoner, Archbishop Konrad Krajewski, Time reported. "You don't need it. You need to get out of the Vatican. Don't wait for people to come ringing. You need to go out and look for the poor."
Nicholson and Flynn think the physical structure of the US Embassy is the most important thing in this world.